The ruins of referentiality
Allegorical realism and traumatic fragments in Scorpion Orchid and The Search
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2179482 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Augustine Chay (0000-0001-8339-7821) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 57 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 680-693 |
| Publication date | 2021-09-03 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Postcolonial Writing (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1744-9855 • E-ISSN: 1744-9863 |
| Publisher | Informa UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1080/17449855.2021.1953114 |
| OpenAlex | W3188704815 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 16 |
This article uses Antony bin Thomas’s The Search (1978) a relatively unknown novel, to reappraise its well-studied contemporary, Lloyd Fernando’s Scorpion Orchid (1976). By drawing from Walter Benjamin’s literary theory of allegory, the article reads both texts’ socio-aesthetic of allegorical realism as a response to the mass trauma and nationalized cultural trauma of May 13, 1969. To emplot a tentatively optimistic trajectory towards interethnic reconciliation, each text recontextualizes traumatic memories of the watershed Chinese–Malay conflict of 1969, its sequelae, parallel antecedents, and other discursive events of the 1970s. Benjamin’s theorization of the ruin as an emblem for allegory is used to rethink each text’s reliance on rape as a vernacular metaphor for collective trauma and as a gendered modality of social coping. While acknowledging the conventionality of each novel’s emplotment of interethnic reconciliation, the article reconsiders the referentiality of two of Fernando’s most enigmatic characters: the transcultural prostitute Sally/Salmah and the messianic Tok Said
Allegory · Art · Linguistics · Literature · Metaphor · Realism · Simile · Sociology · Vernacular · Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies · Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies · History · Philosophy
The Postcolonial Historical Novel
Contesting History
Family Narratives and Abandoned Monuments of the May 13 Riot in the Sungai Buloh Leprosarium
Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism
Colonialism, Violence and Muslims in Southeast Asia
Government and Society in Malaysia
Conceptions of Community in Colonial Southeast Asia
Malaysia after Tun Razak
Recent Malaysian Historiography
Walter Benjamin's Theory of Allegory
The vision of hospitality in Lloyd Fernando'sScorpion Orchid
| Unique citing works | 2 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,09 |
| Citation span | 2004 - 2026 (23) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |